Ripple Price Weekly Forecast: XRP/USD focus shifts to $0.25, is Coronavirus giving back?

After spending an entire week in shambles, the cryptocurrency market has started to wake up to the investors call. The rollercoaster rides last week were mainly driven by the volatility brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic. However, the losses were not unique to the cryptocurrency market as the stock markets in the United States, Europe and Asia plunged in equal measures if not worse.

As this week comes to an end, buyers across the board are coming out of hibernation while those that have been watching from the sidelines are confident enough to join the market. At the time of writing, the market is mostly in the green with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum leading among the major coins with gains of 7.32%, 6.82% and 6.81% in that order.

All the top three cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin BTC), Ethereum and Ripple (XRP) are in the green. Ethereum leads the other two with a 6.82% gain on the day to trade at $146 from $136 (opening value). Bitcoin price is up over 5% on the day after clocking an intraday high of $6,749. BTC/USD is trading at $6,548 but due to high volatility the trend has turned bearish. Ripple, on the other hand, is trading 2.61% higher on the day. The struggle is to recover the ground above $0.17 and push towards $0.18 in the near term.

Cryptocurrency Industry Overview: Ripple Labs anticipates more lawsuits

Ripple has been entangled in a class-action lawsuit for some time, fighting to prove that it is a cryptocurrency and not security token. The United States regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not been straight forward with the distinction between digital tokens that claim to be crypto and pure cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC). Therefore, crypto companies have been left to fight it out in court.

A ruling in a California court in a case involving Ripple Labs said that if tokens such XRP are not securities, they would open themselves for more legal battle on the grounds of deception, abusive or even unfair practices. This means that crypto firms have no way of escaping the arm of the law even if they are identified as not securities.

In this case Ripple Labs could be in for a ‘never-ending’ battle; which could start with a lawsuit by the SEC, more class-action cases and other numerous individually filed cases. According to Law360:

The court’s ruling in the Ripple matter is a significant one. If, as many maintain, cryptocurrencies are not securities, then they will likely be subject to UDAAP laws. And, as discussed above, putative class actions based on alleged UCL violations are among the most common and expensive types of lawsuits.

With the Ripple Labs ruling, there may be a significant uptick in putative class actions targeting the cryptocurrency industry, especially those based in California, which may be burdensome and costly to defend.

Ripple presence in Asia gets a partnership boost

Ripple recently revealed a partnership in Thailand that is going to greatly impact its presence in the Asian region. The partnership deal was struck with Thai fintech startup DeeMoney. The press release said that DeeMoney is already utilizing Ripple’s payment messaging platform (working faster than Swift). Using the platform DeeMoney is able to process inbound money transfers from countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore into Thailand faster and at a cheaper cost.

Ripple knows that adoption is one of the ways to increase demand for XRP. In the long run, the value of XRP is expected to grow significantly as the crypto becomes mainstream.

Ripple Price Forecast: XRP/USD shifts focus to $0.25

Ripple price has steadily recovered from the previous dip to $0.10 and is targeting $0.20 in the short term. The consolidation between $0.14 and $0.15 was necessary for the bulls to gather the strength to push above the resistance at $0.16 and $0.18.

A technical breakout is expected above $0.18 if it is supported by the RSI and the increased buying entries. Moreover, XRP/USD is trading within a triangle pattern; a break above the resistance would pave the way for more action above $0.20. The focus is expected to remain at $0.25 over the weekend and early next week. On the downside, all the former resistance levels at $0.16, $0.15 and $0.14 have been turned into support areas.

XRP/USD 4-hour chart